Cost of printing a coloured page in Nigeria

How much does it cost to print a full page of paper in colour in Nigeria? Last time I checked in 2015, the price was N200 at business centers that I used but that's after the computer operators have included their profit margin.

Assuming you were doing the printing yourself, one thing that is worth knowing is how much it's really going to cost you to print a single page in colour so as to know your costs.

Well, the cost of printing in colour would depend on a couple of factors such as the cost of printing paper, cost of coloured ink, electricity usage and any other factors of production.

Someone recently wanted me to print several copies in full colour and so I was a bit bothered as to how much it was really going to cost me. I got to know that printer inks tend to come with a specification called Page yield. So, if your printer ink's page yield is say 100 pages, then it means it can print 100 pages before needing a replacement. It will be specified for both black ink cartridges as well as color ink cartridges.

Well, based on my findings, a HP 22 Tricolor inkjet cartridge has a page yield of about 165 page and that means it's going to cost me about N4000(about $22) to print 165 pages of colour and that gives about N24 per page. This cost is based on just the ink and excludes other things such as the printing paper, electricity used, time invested, skill used, depreciation of printer, etc but all of them may not cost as much as the cost of printing ink.

Given that it costs so little just to print a coloured page in Nigeria, I wonder why some business centers charge as much as N200(about $1) for printing. I won't mind paying N50(about $0.25) per page that they normally charge when printing in black and while but charging N200 per page is too much. I think N100(about $0.50) may be a bit more reasonable.

It goes to show that doing your printing yourself at your home or office could actually save you money n the long run than if you constantly patronized business centers in Nigeria.

If you are in Nigeria, you can buy your printers online and the one I'm currently using is a HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 5525